authentication

In a rather showy restructuring of priorities, the Andy Warhol Foundation has announced that they will dissolve their authentication board. The task of deciding the provenance of hundreds of purported works by Warhol that the Foundation can’t get to between now and the end of the year will thus be left to other scholars and independent experts. “We’d rather our money go to artists, not lawyers,” said chairman Michael Straus, who said the foundation couldn’t go on indefinitely fielding lawsuits filed by people who found the board’s conclusions unfair (or just unsatisfying). They’d rather focus their energies on grant-making and other activities with a broad public interest.